


Birthmark

by Linebreaker



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Blood, Discussions of historical antisemitism and violence against Jewish people, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, Past Discorporation, Past Violence, Post-Armageddon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 19:03:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20019487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linebreaker/pseuds/Linebreaker
Summary: “What’re you looking at, angel?” Crowley asked. The sunlight made it hard to see his face, but Aziraphale thought he sounded amused.He smiled and, heart stuttering, answered, “You.”Crowley froze momentarily. Aziraphale watched as his entire frame went rigid, his edges rippling like a mirage in the desert, before he relaxed again. He scoffed and grumbled something incomprehensible, then turned away.That’s when Aziraphale noticed the mark.





	Birthmark

**Author's Note:**

> This was requested as a prompt over on tumblr. Prompt: "Why does Crowley hate the 14th century?"

Aziraphale first noticed the mark one morning when Crowley was puttering around the kitchen. The buttery sunlight was filtering through the herbs in the cottage window and fat bees were bumbling about outside, bumping against the glass in their search for flowers.

Crowley had just awoken from one of his week-long naps and stumbled out into the kitchen. Aziraphale regarded him over his reading glasses. He looked soft and sleep-worn, red hair flattened charmingly on one side. His yellow eyes were half-lidded and he was rubbing at one of them with his knuckles.

“Coffee?” he grunted.

“Afraid there’s nothing fresh, dear, but I can—” Crowley flapped his hands at him when Aziraphale went to snap his fingers.

“No, no, no. No. I can get it,” he muttered and then promptly banged his hip against the table corner as he made for the kettle. “Shit!”

Aziraphale huffed out a breath of laughter. “If you insist. That’s what you get for doing it the hard way.”

“It doesn’t taste the same when it’s miracled.”

Looking no more alert—but decidedly more aggravated—than he had before, Crowley went about preparing the kettle. Aziraphale’s morning paper was open in front of him, but it was mostly for show now. He enjoyed watching the demon do mundane things like cook and tend to his garden, so he took ample time to glance up and observe between each line he read.

— _carry out services themselves rather than employ private firms, the chancellor has said. John McDonnell said he_ —

Crowley was still in his sleep clothes. He normally kept to his waistcoats and jackets and sinful trousers, but he’d been noticeably more lax in his apparel over the last few months of their retirement. Aziraphale didn’t mind.

— _wants to limit the outsourcing of services such as bin collections by obliging councils to run them_ —

His loose-fitting pyjama bottoms were slung low on his hips. The long-sleeved grey shirt he wore looked soft, its collar wide enough to drape aside and expose a portion of the demon’s shoulder. Aziraphale let his eyes trace along his skin, forming constellations out of the freckles there.

— _when existing private contracts expire. Cleaning and school dinners could also be taken back under the plans. The government_ —

Crowley was barefoot. As he filled the kettle, Aziraphale watched his toes curl against the tile. He rocked up onto the pads of his feet, exposing their delicate arches briefly, before settling again.

— _said decisions should be left with local councils. The Confederation of British Industry said Labour’s proposal was “an extreme move devoid of evidence yet_ —

He managed to get the kettle on without further incident and turned to rest against the counter. With his back to the window, the morning light streamed in around him like a halo, silhouetting him. Dust motes drifted lazily through the beams of sunlight.

— _dripping in dogma.” In a speech on Saturday, Mr. McDonnell said outsourced contracts were costly and lacked accountability as decisions_ —

“What’re you looking at, angel?” Crowley asked when he glanced up again. The sunlight made it hard to see his face, but Aziraphale thought he sounded amused.

He smiled and, heart stuttering, answered, “You.”

Crowley froze momentarily. Aziraphale watched as his entire frame went rigid, his edges rippling like a mirage in the desert, before he relaxed again. He scoffed and grumbled something incomprehensible, then turned away again.

Something small and fragile unfurled in Aziraphale’s chest like a blooming flower. He smiled to himself and went back to his paper.

It wasn’t much longer before the kettle started whistling. Crowley moved to take it off the flame and go about preparing his coffee. It was while he was reaching to retrieve (see: _steal_ ) Aziraphale’s novelty angel mug off of the top shelf that his shirt rode up to reveal a band of skin. Aziraphale’s eyes were drawn briefly to the divots at the base of the demon’s spine, a little thrill running through him at the sight of them.

Then he noticed the mark.

It was a swath of skin—paler than that which surrounded it, a small swirl of white—that sat just above the jut of Crowley’s hip. Aziraphale squinted, but the shirt fell down and obscured it from view before he could get a decent look.

“Crowley, what is that?”

“Hm?” He was distracted adding heaps of instant coffee to his mug. Personally, Aziraphale detested the stuff, but Crowley was unaccountably attached. Probably because he’d had a hand in inventing it. “What’s what?”

“That mark—there, on your side.”

Crowley finished his preparations and took a sip, smacking his lips in satisfaction. Then he seemed to take in Aziraphale’s question. He paused, rim of the mug pressed against his mouth, and blinked his reptilian eyes at him. “Huh?”

Aziraphale scowled at him as he made his way over to the table—he had a feeling that the demon was being deliberately obtuse. “What is that mark? I don’t think I’ve seen that before.”

Crowley looked bemused as he took his seat across from Aziraphale, mug firmly clutched between his palms. “Never seen it before? You’ve seen me without my clothes on, angel.”

He lifted one eyebrow suggestively and Aziraphale felt his face go hot. Images flashed through his mind— _Crowley beneath him, his sweat-slicked thighs up around Aziraphale’s hips, his body arching up like a bow and his slitted pupils blown wide as he came_ —and he quickly looked away.

“Yes, well.” He cleared his throat and focused on folding his paper for a moment. “I was rather preoccupied at the time.”

When he glanced up again, he noticed that Crowley was sporting a lopsided grin and there was a rather fetching shade of pink staining his cheeks. “Yeah?”

Aziraphale huffed and rolled his eyes. “You know perfectly well that I was, you wicked thing, so stop trying to distract me. What is that mark?” he asked again, pulling off his reading glasses and pointing them at the demon. He knew he sounded petulant, but he was terribly curious.

Crowley’s grin faded slowly, an ember burning out until it curled black and lifeless at the corner of his mouth. He shrugged and the wide neck of his shirt draped further down his shoulder. “That mark’s the reason I hate the 14th century.”

Aziraphale, whose gaze had been inextricably drawn to the gentle slope of demonic clavicle that was now on display, blinked and looked back up into his eyes. “What?”

“Well,” Crowley quickly amended, “it’s the main reason, anyway.”

“I thought you once told me that you hated the 14th century because of the Papal Schism?” Aziraphale asked.

“That was certainly part of it, yes,” he confirmed and took a sip of coffee. He looked more alert now. The soft, sleep-mussed air that hung around him after his naps was quickly dissipating. “As well as that Hundred Year War thing and The Plague.”

“As I recall, those were both terrible things that _you_ took credit for,” Aziraphale reminded him with a quirked eyebrow. As much as Crowley seemed to despise the 14th century, it hadn’t been all fun-and-games for Aziraphale, either. Three simultaneous popes, millions dead, revolts and uprisings—it was all enough to make an angel crazy.

“ _Yes_ ,” Crowley whined, slumping forward in his seat dramatically. “It was full of terrible things and I was terribly busy.”

“Oh, well, you _poor_ dear.”

Crowley scoffed. “Angel, I get the distinct impression that your sympathy is not entirely genuine.”

“My sympathy for devils—you or otherwise—is limited, but I do _genuinely_ adore you, so do with that as you will.”

“I shall,” Crowley said with an absurd waggle of his eyebrows. Aziraphale’s stomach swooped and he rolled his eyes with a fond tolerance.

“Crowley,” he said mildly and tried again. “The mark on your side?”

The demon’s bright yellow eyes regarded him over the top of his mug and, for the first time, Aziraphale could see weary resignation in them. It suddenly struck him how difficult Crowley was making this. A frisson of worry ran down his spine.

“Is—is there something you don’t want me to know? I mean, if so—” he hastened to say when Crowley’s mouth opened. “—that’s perfectly fine. We don’t have to tell each other everything. I just—Well, I just thought—”

“It was an exorcist.”

The rest of Aziraphale’s sentence died in his throat. He felt it whither and turn to dust, coating his tongue with bitter ash. He coughed and asked, “I, uh—beg pardon?”

“An exorcist gave me this mark,” Crowley repeated calmly and gestured towards his left side with a nod of his head. He’d put his mug down and was now focused on Aziraphale. “Back in 1349.”

Aziraphale’s mind began to race. _1349? Where did this happen? Italy? It must have been. Wasn’t I in Italy around that time? Why didn’t he call me for help? Unless—no, we still weren’t really considered acquaintances then, were we? Let alone friends. I don’t think The Arrangement was even in place for another few hundred years_ —

“Stop.”

The gentle command cut through his increasingly distressed train of thought and Aziraphale jerked in his seat. He sucked in a breath through his teeth and blinked up at Crowley. At some point, he had gotten up and come around to stand beside Aziraphale’s chair, half-sitting on the edge of the table.

“W-what?” he asked, thrown by the demon’s sudden proximity and still reeling from his confession. _An exorcist. Why would_ —

“I said _stop_.”

Aziraphale blinked. Crowley crossed his arms with a beleaguered sigh and stared down at him. He’d pushed his sleeves up to his elbows and Aziraphale’s heart gave a squeeze at the dusting of light freckles he could see across his skin.

“I know your brain,” Crowley said. “I know it’s going hell for leather right now trying to figure everything out and I’m sure you’ve _somehow_ managed to blame yourself.”

Aziraphale swallowed and looked away, his eyes lowering to study the wood grain of the table.

“Angel, we weren’t even friends back then,” Crowley said in exasperation, echoing his earlier thoughts. Aziraphale looked back up at him. “You thinking that you were in some way responsible for a run of bad luck I had nearly 700 years ago is just your—” He stammered briefly, jostling his shoulders like he was trying to knock the right words loose. “—angelic guilt or whatever.”

“You saved me more times than I can count and I couldn’t even—”

“I saved myself,” Crowley insisted.

Aziraphale swallowed around the lump in his throat. “You shouldn’t have had to,” he said softly, heart fluttering like a wounded bird within the cage of his ribs.

Crowley made one of his incoherent little noises and then turned away, casting his angular features into profile. The corner of his mouth was pulled down in a frown, jaw grinding back and forth. Aziraphale wanted to reach out to him—to press love in the shape of fingerprints into his warm skin. However, he didn’t think his touch would be well-received at the moment.

Instead, he asked, “Will you tell me about it?”

Crowley looked at him out of the corner of his eye, seeming to consider him. “I think it’ll just upset you,” he finally said.

“I’m afraid that ship has sailed, my dear,” Aziraphale told him. His throat squeezed around the words as he spoke them, rasping against them until they were little more than a whisper. “Please tell me.”

The sigh that passed Crowley’s lips was an ancient thing—something he’d been carrying around for nearly a millennium in his chest. He rolled his neck back and forth. Then he said, “It was in Basel.”

“Switzerland?” Aziraphale asked, blinking in surprise.

“Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t Switzerland at the time, but the sentiment is the same. That’s where it happened. Y-you remember how, after The Black Plague, there were—well, um, there was a lot of hatred towards the Jewish community?”

Aziraphale nodded once, a grim set to his mouth. “I remember,” he said. “The pogroms.”

The Jewish Black Death massacres. They’d started up in 1348 as a result of the plague sweeping across Europe and had lasted for a few years. Christians killing Jews because they thought they were somehow responsible for the disease that had ravaged the continent—that they had invoked the wrath of God or were poisoning the well water. _Ridiculous_ , Aziraphale thought viciously.

Crowley uncrossed his arms so that he could gesticulate while he spoke. “Right. It was a crazy time; everyone was dying and people wanted someone to blame.”

“They usually do,” Aziraphale said without humor. He reached across the table for Crowley’s abandoned coffee, brushing his arm against the demon’s hip. “Human nature.”

“There’s nothing natural about wanting to wipe out an entire race or religion.”

“I don’t disagree.” He took a tentative sip of the coffee and grimaced, quickly holding it out to Crowley. “That is terrible,” he coughed, smacking his lips to try ridding himself of the burnt flavor.

“You just don’t have my exquisite taste,” Crowley sighed, taking the mug out of his hand. His fingertips slid across Aziraphale’s knuckles and an involuntary shiver ran up the angel’s spine. “Anyway, that’s what I was doing in Basel. My people had sent me there a few days before the massacre—I didn’t want to be there and I didn’t have anything to do with the previous pogroms in Savoy or Erfurt or Toulon, really. I think they just assumed I had.”

Aziraphale believed him. Though Crowley had definitely softened during the course of their 6000 year acquaintance, he had never seemed the type to tempt people into mass-slaughter. He was more the _inconvenience-people-into-sinning_ kind of demon. He’d said so himself that, many times, the humans basically took care of the big stuff themselves. No tempting needed.

“And Basel is where you met the, uh, exorcist?” Aziraphale asked.

“Mm-hm,” Crowley mumbled, staring down into his mug with pursed lips. “And, really, I use the term exorcist extremely loosely. He wasn’t what I would consider a _professional_ by any means. I think he just got lucky.”

What Aziraphale _wanted_ to say was that, if the man had truly been an amateur, maybe it was Crowley who had gotten lucky. He bit his tongue, though. Crowley’s posture was hunched, defensive—his shoulders curled forward and his back bowed. His eyes had a distant, vaguely haunted look to them. So Aziraphale swallowed down his anxiety and waited.

Eventually, Crowley blinked like he was coming out of a trance and looked over at him. His yellow irises were blown out, encompassing his eyes. “He got me the day after the riot. There was still ash in the air from, um—from where the townspeople had locked the adults up and set the building on fire. There were kids that the Christians were forcibly converting and I was—I had been drinking. I just, uh—” Crowley paused. Took a breath. “I just don’t like it when they get kids involved.”

“I know,” Aziraphale said, infinitely gentle.

“Anyway, I think my—my glasses slipped and he saw my eyes or—I dunno, he smelled sulphur on me or something—”

_You don’t smell like sulphur_ , Aziraphale thought, but didn’t dare interrupt. _You smell like frankincense._

“—but I p-passed out or he knocked me out and the next thing I remember is that I was strung up somewhere. It was dark and smelled like—like hay and shit. Probably a barn. He, uh …”

Crowley trailed off, looking away again. He was running his nails along the rim of his mug, filling the silence with a low, chittering resonance that set Aziraphale’s teeth on edge. He longed to reach out and lay his hands over Crowley’s—to still them and imbibe some comfort. He linked his fingers together on the tabletop instead.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked in an even tone, trying to sound as though he wasn’t crawling out of his skin.

Crowley’s eyes skittered back over to him. Tension was evident in the set of his jaw and the stark whiteness of his knuckles where he gripped his mug. “Do you want to hear about it?”

Aziraphale frowned, his heart clenching painfully in his chest. He’d been present at an exorcism before. Rome, around the turn of the 19th century. He’d stood back and observed as two Catholic priests attempted to drive the demon Leraje from the body of a young woman.

It had laughed and snarled threats, and Aziraphale had felt its opalescent eyes rake over him. Then Father Cancio had begun chanting his Latin phrases and Father D’Agostino had thrown blessed oils and holy water in its face. The demon’s skin had split and steamed, blisters forming over blisters as Leraje writhed and shrieked. Its dirty fingers had gouged marks into the arms of the chair it was tied to, blood pooling along its cuticles as the nails snapped off, its joints buckling. It bit off the woman’s tongue—spat it onto the floor at their feet—and blood had boiled in its mouth as it shouted obscenities at them.

It had lasted for hours. In the end, Leraje had been exorcised and the woman had died in the chair. Aziraphale could still smell the blood; could still hear her skin sizzling under the holy water.

Then he imagined Crowley in Leraje’s place and his stomach turned so violently that he nearly threw up.

“I never want to hear about you getting hurt, my dear,” he eventually whispered. “But I am here if you want to—”

Crowley waved a hand, cutting him off. “No, I, uh—I’d rather not discuss the details of that, if it’s all the same to you, angel.”

Aziraphale’s breath left him in a messy rush and he felt lightheaded with relief. He had asked Crowley to tell him. He would listen if the demon wanted to explain what had happened to him during his own exorcism attempt, but Aziraphale would rather peel his own skin off than have those images in his head.

“Of course,” he said, voice weak.

Crowley set his mug down on the table behind him, then folded his arms across his midsection, hands grasping loosely at his own elbows. “In any case, after—after everything, I managed to get loose and kill the silly bugger.”

_Good_ , Aziraphale thought viciously.

“I was in pretty bad shape,” Crowley continued, staring blankly off into the middle distance. There was a fine sheen of sweat glistening at his temple and Aziraphale watched his throat move with a swallow. “I got out of Basel and only just managed to make it to the next town before I collapsed. The exorcist—he didn’t have any holy water, thank Somebody, but he did have this, uh, I dunno—a coin or a pendant. I didn’t get a good look at it. It must’ve been a holy relic or something, because it _burned_ like a blessed sonofabitch; left welts all over that I couldn’t heal.”

Crowley reached down absentmindedly and touched his side where Aziraphale knew the mark to be. “This one was the worst. It got infected and I got a fever. I’m sure you can imagine what that looked like back in 1349.”

A lump of dread settled in the pit of Aziraphale’s stomach, poisonous apprehension seeping out into the rest of his body like lead into drinking water. “Like you had the plague.”

Crowley clicked his tongue and said cheerlessly, “Got it in one, angel.”

“What happened?” Aziraphale asked and Crowley sighed wearily.

“The fever wiped me out—put me into a coma, most likely. The townspeople thought I had died, so they buried me in a mass grave with other plague victims—”

“ _What?_ ” Aziraphale gasped, horrified.

“—and I don’t remember much after that. I discorporated at some point; wound up back in Hell. After lots of paperwork and whatnot, I got back topside around 1378.”

“Y-you discorporated? How—how did I not know that? You, erm—” Aziraphale stopped. Drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to center himself. When he opened them again, he found Crowley’s gaze on him. The yellow of his irises had retreated back to their centers. “You don’t look any different,” he told the demon. “You got—what? A-a copy of your body?”

“Did I mention: lots of paperwork,” Crowley said and Aziraphale was relieved to hear humor in his voice.

“1378?” he asked, then sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Just in time for the Papal Schism, I see.”

“Three popes are three too many, angel.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” he said lightly, letting a small smile pull at his mouth. Then he amended, “In this case.”

Crowley chuckled and the pressure seemed to ease off of his shoulders, the tension that had gathered around him like graveyard mist breaking apart and abating. The soft morning sun had transformed his hair into a coppery halo; it caressed his face, highlighting the delicate lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.

Aziraphale watched him for a few moments, then asked hesitantly, “And, um—the mark was, uh, still there when you—when you came back?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “It was the only one. Everything else hadn’t left so much as a scar, but this one—it stayed. Dunno why. Maybe because it was the deepest wound or maybe because it was the one that eventually discorporated me. Or maybe Hell just left it there as a reminder when they remade my body.”

“A reminder?”

Crowley shrugged, the loose nonchalance he was trying to affect ruined by the way his eyes flitted away from Aziraphale’s face. “A reminder that I’m weak or—or maybe reliant on them?”

Aziraphale _ached_ for him. His heart was a crushing weight in his chest. _You aren’t weak_ , he thought.

He swallowed and lifted a hand towards Crowley, hovering just shy of touching him. “May I see?” he asked in a quiet voice.

There was a moment when he thought that Crowley would refuse; would push himself away from the table and disappear into the bedroom; would hole himself away and sleep for a hundred years. But then Crowley sighed, resigned. He reached down and lifted the edge of his shirt, pivoting slightly so that Aziraphale could view the back of his hip.

The mark was obvious, but Aziraphale let his eyes drag over the rest of Crowley’s golden skin before he examined it. He ran his gaze along the shallow dips between each rib, counted the lumps of his spine. Patches of freckles stood out like tiny galaxies.

“You’re beautiful,” he said absentmindedly. Then he blushed.

Crowley huffed out a laugh, relaxing. “Thank you, angel. You’re not so bad yourself.” Aziraphale looked up at him just in time to catch a cheeky wink. He rolled his eyes.

“You’re also ridiculous.”

“You like me.”

“I certainly do _not_ ,” Aziraphale said airily and his heart gave a little flutter when Crowley chuckled. With a smile, he returned to his perusal of the warm skin before him, finally letting himself look at the white mark on Crowley’s side.

It was smaller than Aziraphale had initially thought—no bigger than a two pence—and was almost perfectly round. He suspected that whatever had made the mark had been intricately decorated, but the curving lines it left behind were now blurred and he couldn’t make out any details.

“You didn’t try to miracle this away?” he asked.

“Oh, I did,” Crowley said, sounding resigned. “No good. It’s one scar that I can’t make go away.”

_It doesn’t really look like a scar. More like a patch of vitiligo_ , he thought, reaching up unthinkingly to touch the mark. He laid his fingertips against its edge and Crowley hissed out a shocked breath.

Aziraphale jerked his hand back, distraught. “Oh, I’m sorry!” he stammered. “I-I didn’t—”

“You’re fine,” Crowley said, a slight tremble in his voice. His shirt was still pulled up, but he’d reached down to cover the mark with his own hand, rubbing at it. “Just startled me is all.”

Aziraphale watched him run his fingers along the skin, worry gnawing at him. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. You can touch me, if you want.”

“Well, dear, I always want to touch you,” he said without thinking and with far more levity than he felt. Crowley lifted his eyebrows at him and Aziraphale huffed. “Oh, hush. You’re hardly scandalized.”

Crowley grinned. “Here,” he said with a little sigh and reached over to take ahold of Aziraphale’s hand. His grip was a loose circle around his wrist, fingertips stroking over his pulse point and sending frissons of pleasure up his arm. Crowley pulled and Aziraphale went willingly, his heart in his throat. He let the demon press his palm against the mark, his own fingers smoothing over the back of Aziraphale’s hand before he let go. 

His skin was warm and pliant, and Aziraphale let himself enjoy having it beneath his fingers once again before he really focused on the mark. He ran a thumb along its edge. It was smooth, not raised like he expected a scar to be—more like a birthmark.

And then it struck Aziraphale. That’s exactly what it was: a birthmark. Crowley had been tortured, branded, killed, and then had carried the mark into his new body after his resurrection. A reminder of his failings.

Before he could think about what he was doing, Aziraphale leaned forward. He placed his lips over the mark, sucking a wet, open-mouthed kiss to the white skin. Above him, he heard Crowley hiss in a startled breath. Fingers wove through his hair, caressing his scalp.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley asked, sounding breathless.

He kept his mouth where it was. Using his tongue and teeth and lips, he pressed love and reassurance down into the skin, marking Crowley’s side. The demon’s ragged breaths filled the kitchen and his fingers dragged through Aziraphale’s curls when he pulled back to examine his handiwork. Where the white birthmark had once been, the skin now stood out red and blotchy.

“Did you just give me a hickey?” Crowley asked, sounding equal parts offended and impressed.

“Not really,” Aziraphale said and passed a thumb over the red mark. Angelic power tingled like a static charge as he miracled the erythema away and Crowley gave a little jolt.

“Hey! What did you do?” he huffed and craned his neck to take a look.

Then he froze.

Aziraphale watched him, his pulse thrumming like hummingbird wings in his throat as Crowley touched the skin where the mark had once been. In its place, a mass of dark freckles now stood.

An angel’s kiss.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Aziraphale told him, his voice reedy. “I just—I adore you. I worship every inch of you. And if there is a part of you that causes you pain—a mark that reminded you of an event so traumatic you would despise an entire millennium because of it—Well, if I could take that mark away …”

Crowley looked up at him, his eyes wide, but said nothing. Aziraphale swallowed down the worry that threatened to choke him and continued.

“You aren’t weak,” he told Crowley. “You are wily and resilient and you care _so much_. I know that you’re a demon and you don’t want to hear it, but I see so much good in you that naming everything I love would be like counting the stars. I can’t do it. You are made of starlight. I wish that I was half as strong as—”

He didn’t get to finish. Crowley swooped down and caught his mouth in a bruising kiss. Aziraphale gasped into it and reached up to catch ahold of Crowley’s shoulders, hanging on. The demon’s fingers traced over the tops of his ears and down along his jawline as he kissed him, eliciting tiny shivers from Aziraphale.

It lasted only for a few seconds before Crowley retreated, playfully nipping at Aziraphale’s bottom lip as he went, but the angel was left winded. Crowley smiled at him, looking beautifully rumpled, and said, “Thank you, angel.”

It sounded remarkably like _I love you, too_.

Aziraphale grinned back, relief and happiness pouring out of his bones like sunlight and warming the garden blooming in his chest. His heart pounded. “You’re quite welcome, my dear.”

They spent a few moments quietly regarding one another, Crowley absentmindedly touching his side through his shirt. Then he reached out to Aziraphale, laying a hand against his cheek.

“I,” he said in a gentle voice, drawing out the syllable as he swept a thumb across the skin just beneath Aziraphale’s eye, “am going to take a shower.”

Aziraphale blinked. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Been asleep for a week,” Crowley said by way of explanation. He dropped his hand and pushed himself away from the table. Aziraphale watched him go, eyes drawn to the sway of his hips, and tried not to feel disappointment that Crowley was walking away instead of kissing him.

He sighed and mumbled, “Well then, I suppose I’ll make some tea.”

“Or you could join me?”

Aziraphale looked over at Crowley. He was standing in the kitchen entrance, leaning heavily against the doorframe. There was a smile on his face, and he looked soft and vulnerable in his too-big shirt and bare feet. Then his eyelids fluttered and his smile morphed into a predatory grin, lips curling up to reveal his straight, white teeth. Arousal dropped into Aziraphale’s stomach like a lead weight; his breath shuddered out of his lungs.

“C’mon, angel,” Crowley said, his voice a deep rumble like the beginnings of a summer storm. “I’ll put marks all over your skin this time.”

Then he disappeared through the doorway, leaving Aziraphale gaping in his wake. The angel sat there for a moment, listening as Crowley moved about on the other side of the small cottage. The shower started up.

Aziraphale thought about Crowley’s naked skin; about steam curling up around his legs and hips and back; about water beading along freckles instead of white birthmarks. He smiled and stood.

The tea could wait.


End file.
